Officials called Sunday for a manual recount of votes in part of this state after a limited review showed Al Gore had more votes in the US presidential contest than earlier thought.
Speaking to reporters following a hand recount of some 4,300 ballots, Carol Roberts, commissioner of Palm Beach County, said the review had resulted in a net gain of 19 votes for Gore.
That figure, based on a recount of just one percent of the 431,000 ballots cast in the county, suggested that the election outcome could swing either way depending on the results of a county-wide recount, she said.
Unofficial but credible returns tabulated by US media earlier gave Gore's chief rival, George W. Bush, a lead of a mere 327 votes in a state where some six million ballots were cast.
But Palm Beach County was regarded as a bastion of Democratic support for Gore, who has asked for the votes cast there to be reexamined closely and has said he is confident of winning the presidency once this is done.
"Given the importance of the election ... I believe the people of Palm Beach County have entrusted us with the power to voice their right to participate in their government," Roberts said.
"This clearly would have affected the results of the national election."
"I believe all the people in Palm Beach County ... as well as the people in the United States, deserve to have an answer" to who won the presidential election, she added.
The decision to move ahead with a hand recount of all the votes in the pivotal county was taken by Roberts and the other two members of the country's electoral commission who voted 2-1 in favor of the move.
But it also came just hours after the Bush campaign filed a lawsuit in a US court to block any manual vote recounts in Florida on grounds the procedure was more open to human error and corruption than machine counting.
The electoral commission scheduled a meeting for Monday to determine how to move ahead with a county-wide manual recount, while a judge was scheduled to rule at about the same time on the Bush camp's lawsuit.
Shortly after the Bush campaign announced its lawsuit, spokesmen for Gore made clear their intention to fight to the finish for every vote in Palm Beach County and, by extension, for the presidency.
"The law is the law," Gore campaign manager William Daley told reporters Saturday outside Gore's official residence in Washington.
Gore's chief legal strategist, former secretary of state Warren Christopher, said his team was contemplating other undisclosed "options" for taking the fight forward.
But James Baker, another former secretary of state now working as Bush's top legal aide, earlier urged Gore in essence to concede defeat.
"Based on the results, we urged the Gore campaign to accept the finality of the election," he said Saturday at a news conference in the Florida capital, Tallahassee.
The Bush lawsuit, filed before the US District Court for the Southern District of Florida, notably claims that manual recounts allowed for "subjective interpretation of voters' intents."
It referred specifically to ballots where the mark corresponding to a candidate was partially punched, or where voters punched two holes instead of a single one.
Several other lawsuits have been filed by individuals in Palm Beach County, amid claims voters were confused by the layout of the ballot.
In his weekly radio address Saturday, President Bill Clinton appealed to Americans to be patient.
"The important thing for all of us to remember now is that a process for resolving the discrepancies and the challenges to the election is in motion. The rest of us need to be patient and wait for the results," Clinton said -- WEST PALM BEACH, Florida (AFP)
© 2000 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
